Courage
by surefireglambert
Summary: Cooper thought he knew everything about his brother, but there's dark secret Blaine's been keeping from his big brother for years... TRIGGER WARNING. AU. ONESHOT.


**TRIGGER WARNING: Talks of attempted suicide, self harm and abuse.**

* * *

><p>The creaking of a door and the sound of muffled sobs. This was enough to tear Cooper Anderson's attention away from his book to look up at the source of the sounds. When he spotted his little brother's face in the opening of his bedroom door, streaked with tears, he immediately put his book down and walked to the door.<p>

"Hey Bud, what's wrong?"

Blaine hiccupped as he came into the room, sitting down on the bed and taking deep breaths in order to stop the tears from falling. Instead of talking, he put his head in his hands and shook his head.

Cooper's stomach twisted into a knot as he took a seat next to his younger brother. He pulled him as close as possible, letting Blaine's tears soak through his black t-shirt. Cooper had been doing this ever since Blaine was six, when the mocking from his peers and words of discouragement from their parents had begun. Now, when Blaine was seventeen, he still came to his brother whenever he needed comfort or support, even if it was a phone call from five hundred miles away.

They stayed like that for what could have been hours, Cooper not minding or caring in the Blaine had finally cried all the tears he thought he had, he looked up at Cooper, eyes bloodshot and face red.

"Do you want to tell me what's wrong?"

This time, Blaine nodded, sniffing and taking a few deep breaths. "It's K-Kurt.

Immediately Cooper's mind went to the worst possible scenario, anger soon bubbling up inside him. "What'd he do? Do you want me to go take care of it? Where is he?" He had met Kurt a few days earlier when he'd first arrived back home for a visit, immediately approving of him purely because he made Blaine happier than he'd seen him in years.

Blaine chuckled, his expression brightening a little. "N-No, it's n-not anything you need to take care of, don't worry."

Cooper looked suspiciously at the smaller boy. "Then what is it?"

"There's been this kid from Dalton, Sebastian, who... who I guess likes me a-and he's been making all this crap up th-that..." Blaine choked over the last word before bursting into tears again.

"Sh, sh, sh." The older boy gently rubbed a hand up and down Blaine's back. "There's no need to get all worked up again. Now, what did this kid say?"

"He st-started telling Kurt I d-did all this stuff with him..." he trailed off, nodding his head in a manner that suggested what he was trying to say. Cooper nodded in understanding. "So Kurt thinks I ch-cheated on him and we g-got into this huge fight and he told me th-that he needed to take some time to th-think about things. About us."

Cooper stayed quiet for a few moments, digesting everything Blaine had told him. Blaine remained quiet as well, hiccupping and sniffing less and less frequently as time progressed. After a little while, Cooper spoke up.

"Well," he started. "You know how I've felt about the few boyfriends you've had before Kurt."

For the first time, Blaine smiled genuinely. "Yes, I'm familiar with your hatred of Derek's laugh, Anthony's mannerisms and most recently, Jason's obsession with-"

"Okay stop!" Cooper exclaimed, as he started laughing. "I don't want to hear it!"

"Geez, it wasn't that weird! You only met him once when you came home for Christmas anyway."

"Says you. It was still weird. You were too engulfed in his dreamy blue eyes, million dollar smile and chiseled body to notice his creepy obsession with..." He shuddered, causing Blaine to laugh again.

"What's the point of this?"

"What I'm trying to say is," Cooper said, becoming serious again. "Kurt is perfect for you Blaine. He's exactly what you need and you're exactly what he needs. I can see it in his eyes whenever you're together." He smiled. "I'm not gonna let this relationship die because of what some stupid jerk is saying."

Blaine smiled for a second before it disappeared as quickly as it'd appeared. "But Coop, if he cared so much about me, why would he think I cheated on him?"

"Sometimes things just have a way of getting under someone's skin so much, they begin to believe them." Cooper sighed. "That's what this Sebastian has done. Kurt's starting to believe the lies he's making up, no matter how rediculous they are, because he's constantly hearing them and beginning to second guess himself."

Blaine stayed quiet for a few minutes, looking around the room until his eyes landed on his big brother. Cooper met his gaze and got a sickening feeling when he saw the pure fear in his younger brother's eyes.

"I can't lose him Coop. I just can't do it."

"You're strong Blaine. You're one of the strongest people I know. I don't know anyone else who could have gone through what you did and not done something completely irrational because of it."

"But I can't do it without him." Blaine's voice cracked as he avoided eye contact with the older boy. "Because I almost did do that irrational thing."

Confusion washed over Cooper's features until Blaine pulled up his shirt sleeve, flipping over his arm to reveal faded, yet still painfully evident, scars all along his wrist and arm.

"Blaine." was all Cooper could choke out, reaching over to trace his fingers along the scars.

"It was in seventh grade when I started," Blaine said slowly. "School was terrible, the people made my life miserable day after day, Mom and Dad were awful, you were away in New York, it was purely horrible. I was just sick of all the crap, so one day when I came home, I found a razor and just..." he trailed off again before speaking. "Cut my wrist."

By this point, Cooper could feel the trears streaming down his face. He hastily wiped them away with his wrists in an attempt to keep his calm and cool façade, but he had a hunch Blaine had already seen them.  
>The first time I did it... I never planned on making it a regular thing," Blaine continued. "I just figured I'd do it once, relieve a little stress and then move on. But... after the first time, it just... it felt so <em>good<em> to be in control of my own pain and I got these rushes of adrenaline everytime I did it and-" Blaine looked up at his brother. "Once you start, it's _so hard_ to stop."

"Why... Why didn't you c_all_ me or something?" Cooper asked desperately. "I would have done everything I could to help. I would have come home in a heartbeat, Courtney would have understood-"

"Why would I call and disrupt your life in New York with your amazing girlfriend to bug you with my stupid problems?" Blaine answered. "You were living your dream, I didn't want you to feel like you had to come back to Westerville to help me."

"You know I'd do anything for you Bud. You know that right?"

"Yes, and that's why I didn't tell you. Like I said, I knew you'd want to come back home to help and I didn't want you to put your whole life on hold for me." He stopped, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. "Do you want to hear the rest?"

"There's more?"

"Unfortunately."

"Um, yeah," he said weakly, leaning back against the headboard of his bed as Blaine shifted positions so he was facing him, legs crossed in front of him.

"So," Blaine started. "I... I kept cutting regularly until I was in ninth grade at public school." Blaine knew he didn't have to explain the specification in what school it was, since Cooper knew he'd had to go through freshman year twice. Except for the small fact as to why he'd had to repeat the grade in the first place. "Dad found my razor that I had hidden in my sock drawer." He heard Cooper gasp, since he knew what kind of reprecussions Blaine got for stupid things with their father. He could only imagine the kind of reaction he'd gotten for something like this. Cooper cringed at the thought.

"They called me down and screamed at me, telling me how stupid I was, since they hadn't needed to ask what I was doing with it. That was nothing though, I was used to the slurs and the names I got on a daily basis." Blaine paused. "Then Dad stood up and shoved me so hard into the bookshelf, he dislocated my shoulder and broke my arm."

"Blaine," Cooper started to say, his voice wavering and thick with tears.

The younger boy held up a hand. "I'll stop if you want me to, but if you want to hear the rest, I can't stop. Or I'll never have the courage to finish." He expression was stoic, as if he was incapable of feeling any emotion at all. Cooper simply nodded in a way that encouraged him to continue.

"After that, I started screaming and crying out because of the pain, like anyone in my situation would have. Once I was able to get up, I made the mistake of getting up and trying to walk to the kitchen to get a phone, icepack, anything to relieve the pain or get help. With my luck, Mom and Dad were having pasta that night, so when Dad chased me in, you can imagine what he grabbed first." He shuddered. "Let's just say I haven't boiled water or eaten pasta in a long time. I also didn't go to school very much for a while."

"Wait, so-"

"I didn't fall out of a tree while climbing with my friends or go through a major hoodie phase. And I most definately didn't get held back for academic reasons."

"Wait, so you were held back because-"

"I was held back because I couldn't go to school with huge, ugly burns on my face. I always hid out at the coffee shop down the street." Blaine sighed. "And when I did go to school, my head just wasn't there so my grades suffered then too."

Cooper shook his head in disbelief, yet it didn't shock him much at all that their father would do that. That's the way their family worked: their father ran the house, doing whatever he wanted, and their mother stood along side, never saying a word unless it was to agree with her husband. And they absolutely _never_ supported, cared about, or cared for Blaine. That'd always been Cooper's job.

"After that," Blaine continued, snapping Cooper as his thoughts and breaking the few moments of silence, "I only went through the motions. They shipped me off to Dalton with my things as soon as they could so I could repeat freshman year without being a disgrace or nuisance to them." He took a deep breath, running his hands through his messy curls.

"It had to have been around early October of freshman year. I had a new round of bruises from a grade I'd gotten on a pop quiz and I was home for the first time since they'd shipped me off to Dalton, but not by choice. Earlier that week, I'd gotten a call from Dad saying I should come home to help him fix up Mom's car. He said he'd had a rough week and needed some help and that I could use a break and 'get my mind off my schoolwork'. I knew immediately knew something was up, if none other than the fact that it was against his nature to be nice to me.

"The whole time, he kept talking about sports, cars, fixing things, all that stereotypical guy stuff. He seemed adament about getting me to show an interest in any and all of those things. It took me no more than five minutes to figure out why he'd called me home. I called him out on it, asked him why he was trying to make me the child he'd wanted, not who I was."

Blaine and Cooper both shuddered as if on cue, both knowing it had nothing to do with the probable draft from the old windows that never seemed to keep the cold December air out of the house.

"Dad happened to be holding a socket wrench when I asked and before I knew it, he was coming at me with it. I managed to duck out of the way before it hit me, but he kept coming at me until he managed to corner me, making solid contact with the same shoulder he'd previously dislocated." Blaine paused, wiping a tear from his cheek. "I had jumped sideways, trying to get behind his car, barely two seconds before he made contact with the end of my shoulder and upper part of my arm. Based on our locations, he easily would have made direct contact with the side of my head if I hadn't tried to jump at the exact moment that I did." He looked his older brother straight in the piercing blue eyes. "A fraction of a second later and I would either be dead right now or have serious brain damage."

Anger towrads his parents bubbled inside Cooper, threatening to lash out at any moment. "Blaine, why haven't you _told _someone? Someone who can actually do something about all this?"

"The same reason I'm still keeping their dirty little secret. I'm terrified that if somehow they find out before, say, the police get here if that's who I told, then it'd be worse off than before. Or if whatever I did didn't work and they found out. I just can't take that risk."

"Well then let me do it!"

"I can't have you always fighting my battles for me. Yes, I didn't handle this well, but I've gotten better. Trust me."

Cooper reluctantly stayed quiet, signaling for Blaine to continue.

"Anyway, after all that, Dad had me cornered and took full advantage of the fact that I was on the ground. As soon as he let up, I managed to stand up and call Wes so he could bring me to the hospital. I sat outside until he showed up.

"Since I had never gone to the hospital any of the other times Dad had gotten mad, I had a lot more problems than the most recent ones. They managed to get most everything fixed and back to normal except for the dislocated shoulder, since I'd had my friend pop it into place for me at Dalton because he'd known what to do.

"When I went back to Dalton as soon as they let me out of the hospital, I was sick and tired of feeling unwanted, tired of the way our parents were treating me." Blaine sighed, looking up at Cooper again. "So I got out my pill bottle and razor and went into the bathroom while David was gone and... I took every pill after I'd run the razor over my wrist a few times and written _I'm done_ on a slip of paper. Everything went fuzzy and black and the next thing I knew, I was in a hospital bed, all the Warblers crowded around me."

"And no one _told_ me?" Cooper exclaimed. "My little brother tried to kill himself and _no one told me_?"

"Mom and Dad barely cared," Blaine murmured at he shrugged, suddenly feeling very guilty. "I... I just couldn't do that. Especially not to you." His voice was thick with tears as he cleared his throat before speaking again. "When they let me out, I still wished I could have actually been able to do it, actually been able to end it. So I tried again, but David walked in before I actually got to do anything.

"After that, the Warblers sent me to what they called their own version of musical therapy, where they had me perform songs based on what I was going through and they performed for me. I can say it definately helped, knowing I had all those guys who cared about me that much.

"I kept the razor and pills in the back of the drawer in the bathroom, never having the courage to throw them away, just incase. A week or two after that, Wes and I were at the movies and these huge guys started calling us homos and queers when we were leaving. I felt like it was my fault, like I radiated _I'm gay_ and I was bringing Wes down with me.

"I went back to Dalton and looked at the bottle and razor for a while until David came in to see what was taking me so long in there. That's when I broke down and told him everything I had never told anyone but Wes before. I felt so much better after that and when I was done, I put away the pills and razor."

Cooper looked up at the younger boy, smiling slightly at the mentions of what seemed to him like progress. He was happy Blaine had had people who were there to support him when he wasn't able to.

"This continued for the rest of freshman year. I still kept the stuff in the drawer, only to take them out when things were bad and I thought I wanted to use them. I only cut once after that point and it wasn't that bad because David came in a few minutes after I'd gone in the bathroom. That summer I spent only a small portion of it at home with Mom and Dad, a lot of it was spent out and about with the Warblers or at Wes' lake house on Lake Erie with him and David."

"I'm so jealous," Cooper said jokingly, grinning and earning a smile from Blaine.

"You should be, it was so nice. There was a dock, a swing and the house was _so big_, it had four bedrooms and a deck that overlooked the la-"

Blaine was interrupted when a pillow hit his face. When he picked it up, he saw Cooper's smirking face. "That's what you get for bragging about your beautiful lakehouse."

"Anyway," Blaine continued, still smiling. "Sophomore year started and it was already looking brighter. The Warblers let me have the first solo of the year, an impromptu concert in the senior commons, singing "Teenage Dream". I was walking down the hall because I was running late and as I looked down at Grandpa's pocket watch for the time-"

"You carry around Grandpa's pocket watch?"

"Obviously. How else would I tell the time?"

"Oh, I don't know. A regular watch? Phone? A clock perhaps?"

"You're just jealous because Grandpa gave it to me." Cooper rolled his eyes as Blaine smiled smugly.

"Oh please. I'm _perfectly_ responsible, thank you very much. I'm just severely underappreciated around here."

"You keep telling yourself that Coop." Blaine grinned as Cooper stuck his tongue out at him. "As I was saying. I was looking at the absolutely _gorgeous_ and valuable pocket watch our lovely Grandfather gave especially to me-"

"Will you get on with it already?"

"Okay, that time I was doing it on purpose." Blaine grinned again. "But yes, I will. I was looking at the time when I heard someone say _Excuse me_ from the stairs. I looked up and saw the single most beautiful boy I'd ever layed eyes on. It took all the power in me to remain calm and collected as he started saying something about being new and wanting to know what was going on. I managed to catch his name, Kurt, inbetween him asking what was going on and telling me that he was new. Being the idiot I am, I decided to lead him down the back hall, holding his hand none the less, calling it a shortcut, when it actually took twice as long just so I could spend more time with him.

"When we got the the senior commons, I practically sang the song to him, not holding back at all. It worked just as I'd planned, because when I finished he erupted into applause and I could see in his eyes that he'd felt the same thing I had at the stairs.

"After everyone had cleared out, I talked to him for a little with Wes and David, learned that he came here as a spy, then took him to that room that you told me about when I first transferred-"

"That one where I always got in trouble for-"

"Yes that one. I really don't want to hear it again if you don't mind," Blaine requested. The older boy huffed dramatically as Blaine rolled his eyes.

"Where was I? Oh yeah. So Wes, David, Kurt and I sat down and talked a little about the fact that he was here to spy, but we didn't think he was a threat and all that. After that, Kurt and I talked alone about why the real reason he came was. I learned he was being bullied just as badly as I had been at my other school. We finished talking and I had to get to class, so I showed him out before heading to math.

"When I got back to my dorm after dinner later that day, I thought about everything that had happened that day. Before Kurt left, we'd exchanged numbers _as friends_," Blaine clarified for his brother as he began winking and moving his eyebrows in suggestive motions as soon as Blaine had said it. "It's just like the movie _When Harry Met Sally_, we got together in the end didnt we?" Blaine grinned as Cooper rolled his eyes at the referance to one of Blaine's favorite movies.

"Anyway, I had texted him a while after he left with just _Courage_ and my name. Just so he remembered to stay strong. That got me thinking that, if I can tell others to be strong and I can act like I'm strong myself, why can't I truly be strong and confident like I come across?

"As soon as I realized this, I went straight into the bathroom and took out the pills and razor I hadn't seen in quite some time. I opened the bottle, poured all the pills in the toilet and flushed them down, then threw away the razor and empty bottle. When David came back, I told him all this and we celebrated by watching the latest Harry Potter movie that was out at the time."

"It was well deserved," Cooper commented. "I'm so proud that you could take such a huge step and do that for yourself."

"I was really proud of myself too." Blaine smiled. "In the back of my mind, it was always because of you that I did it. I knew that I had to stay strong for you because we were all each other had growing up. The ones that were always and will always be there for each other."

"You got that right Bud," Cooper said softly, moving so he was next to his younger brother and pulled him close in a tight hug. When they pulled away, Cooper spoke first. "That was really good advice you gave to Kurt. Where did you get that from?"

Blaine rolled his eyes. "Oh geez, I don't know. I'm just creative I guess..."

Cooper laughed. "That was pretty good advice, if I do say so myself."

"Of course you think that. You're the one who first said it when I was seven."

"I'm not fantastic with coming up with ellaborate advice. My philosophy is is short, sweet and to the point."

"Well it helped me through so much and from what I'm told, it helped Kurt as well." Blaine pulled Cooper close again. "You done good Bro."

"Well thank you," he answered, putting his face in his brother's shoulder as Blaine breathed in the scent of Cooper's shirt, which smelled distinctly of his cologne and peppermint.

Blaine pulled away when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. When he pulled it out, he saw Kurt's name on the screen, showing an incoming call.

"Go ahead," Cooper said before Blaine even said a word. "As long as you promise me a Harry Potter marathon when you get off."

"Deal," Blaine answered eagerly before answering the call and walking out of the room.

Copper sighed and smiled as he watched Blaine leave, putting his book away and straightening up a little. As he left his room and passed Blaine's, he spotted the younger boy lying on his back on the bed, staring at the ceiling with his phone to his ear, talking too quiet for Cooper to hear from where he was standing.

_He really is something_, he thought as a smile spread across his face. _He's truly the greatest brother anyone could ask for._

What Cooper didn't know is that Blaine had just finished telling Kurt about how his big brother Cooper was the greatest brother anyone could ever have.


End file.
